Despite having abundant wealth, power, and resources and making great efforts to bring about regional balance, there is a deviation from spatial equality in Iran’s structure, which has led to the establishment of center-periphery structure as the dominant model in Iran. This structure has been created due to many factors, forces, and currents. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to present a theoretical model of spatial inequality in Iran using Lynham’s theorizing method. There were five steps in the application of this method. In the first method, i.e., conceptualization, the theoretical model was developed using meta-synthesis method and MAXQDA software. The obtained model entailed a host of concepts and components. These included  context-based  theory-driven discourse, centralization and making the periphery dependent, the reverse results of development plans, unequal power relations, inequality of benefits and wealth (economic inequality), inappropriate policymaking and management, weak local and regional management as opposed to central power, unbalanced distribution of population and activity in geographical spaces, and unbalanced distribution of natural resources. These concepts, grouped into ideological, economic-political, and contextual discourses, have created spatial inequality and center-periphery relationship in Iran.

As one of the most important and influential urban planning approaches, comprehensive plans can be considered from the different and relevant dimensions and aspects such as the planning system, the content of plans, preparation-approval process, and execution procedure. Hence, this research focuses on the reasons for the inefficiency of comprehensive plans, especially concerning the nature and the substance of this urban planning approach. To this end, in addition to reviewing relevant theories and views, objective instances of the mentioned reasons have been pursued. Therefore, Nowshahr’s Comprehensive Plan was assayed for the ex-post evaluation of plan implementation to assess its efficiency and feasibility in certain aspects, including social and physical dimensions. Following a linear and one-way procedure, inflexibility and lack of realism, single vision and mostly physical solutions, providing too many details based on static and solid frameworks, and the impossibility of accurate predictions are the substantial critical reasons for the inefficiency of urban planning based on comprehensive plans approach. These factors are the challenges that Nowshahr’s Comprehensive Plan also suffers from them identically. The unrealistic approach in determining the city limit, an incorrect policy of using open spaces and increasing density in contradiction with the ecological, touristic, and port nature of the city, failure to realize most of the proposed land uses, and consequently, a severe shortage of service spaces, are among the most apparent objective instances regarding the inefficiency of Nowshahr’s Comprehensive Plan according to the mentioned substantial reasons. Considering the reasons for inefficiency and analysis of the objective instances are an essential strategy that can differentiate the substance of urban plans, especially ones prepared based on the evolution in urban planning and substitution of new approaches, from the old and traditional cases and make them successful more than before.

The usefulness of many forms of spatial studies relies on the nature of the topics under study. Geographers and urban planners have a long-lasting tradition of studying the data derived from spatial issues at regional and urban levels. Nonetheless, no standard has been offered so far on the provision of statistical results in the form of spatial units. Therefore, the results of the previous studies in this field have been influenced by the scale and zoning effects. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of scale and zoning on the spatial unit results. To this end, the rural areas located in the southern parts of West Azerbaijan province were selected. This study adopted the critical positivism approach and used quantitative data collection and analysis. Moreover, this research project was descriptive-analytical in terms of method and applied in terms of purpose.  The statistical population of the study included 1143 villages with an overall population of 418948 in 9 southern cities of West Azerbaijan province. The study was done using 8 indices of rural services, which were composed of 77 indicators in total. Then, the effect of scale and zoning on the results was analyzed. The results showed that the value of Moran’s statistic related to the overall index of rural service distribution level has been 0.39 at city, 0.06 at rural district level, and 0.05 at village level. Accordingly, the distribution of rural services has been clustered at the city level, but has been random at rural district and village levels. Moreover, the results of the rural services overall index was 15.09 at city level, 10.88 at rural district level, and 2.31 at village level. This shows that by changing the spatial unit scale, the results of the spatial distribution of services has totally changed. This finding is true for zoning, too; with a change in the zoning pattern, the results of spatial units have changed. These findings show that the nature of rural service distribution alters with the change in the scale and zoning models.

The growing role of science and technology in economic development makes the necessity of policymaking and planning for the science and technology system more important. In line with centralized, top-down planning approaches to science and technology policymaking, the spatial planning approach is a bottom-up effort to identify regional capacities and potentials in order to provide an endogenous and balanced model for the development of science and technology. Although the spatial planning approach in its general form has a multi-decade history in the planning literature, the optimization of this approach in the science and technology governance needs methodological innovations. The purpose of this study was to provide a science and technology spatial planning methodology using institutional mapping. To this end, we used two cross-sections. On the one hand, we took into account innovation within a regional system, and on the other hand, we adopted the institutional mapping to attain a method for its analysis and estimation. In this system, first the institutions of the science and technology institution including the science institution, the technology institution, and the market institution were identified, and then the interconnection capabilities of these three institutions and their subsidiaries were evaluated. This was done through the extraction of the similarity graph. The similarity graph, which was obtained through the quantification of binary relationships of the science and technology system sub-institutions, expressed the diversity and intensity of the connections of each institute with other institutes. The more diverse and intense the relationships among the institutions were in general, the more optimal the science and technology system would be. Ultimately, observing this graph, the policymaker can design a scenario for moving toward regional balance for each of these institutions so that in the predetermined chronological horizons, the institutional proximity is increased and the agreement and accord of the institutions are enhanced.

The progress of smartening cities on the one hand and the requirements of urban sustainability on the other hand have paved the way for transition to the sustainable smart city. The study at hand was carried out to present an optimal model of smart city from the viewpoint of sustainable urban development. This study was an applied research project in terms of purpose and a cross-sectional survey in terms of research method and data collection timespan. The statistical population included urban management managers and experts. The optimal sample size was determined to be 384 using Morgan’s table and the participants were selected via simple random sampling method. The data was collected through a questionnaire that had been validated through construct, convergent, and divergent validity measures. Using Cronbach’s alpha and combined reliability measures, the dependability of the questionnaire was confirmed. To validate the smart city model from the viewpoint of sustainable urban development, the partial least squares regression and Smart PLS software were used. According to the obtained results, the smart urban infrastructure and smart governance are the two cornerstones of the model that have the strongest effects on the creation of a smart city based on sustainable development. The effectiveness rate is decreased in the subsequent levels and the variables at the same level show mutual interaction. By affecting the smartening of transportation and influencing the technology-based smart businesses, these factors lay support to smart economy and environment. Then, through smart structures and smart people, the sustainable urban development can be attained, which in turn leads to smartening the city.

As city framework, the city spatial organization is a broader and more comprehensive concept than city spatial structure. In fact, the spatial structure tends only to the physical structure of the city, while spatial organization takes also into account the examination and identification of various functions, including economic, social, transportation functions. In addition, high-rise buildings – as phenomena that have flourished in the past decade in Hamedan and are still growing – have always got influenced by various factors and have affected various urban aspects such as spatial-physical, economic, social, environmental, and traffic dimensions. In fact, in addition to the effects of this issue on the physical structure of the city, they have brought about many changes in the spatial and functional organization of the city such that changes in the daily commuting to shopping centers, offices, etc. in the city are clearly observable. On the other hand, the previous studies have rarely addressed the effect of high-rise buildings on the spatial and functional organization of the city in major areas of business. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze and evaluate the effects of high-rise buildings in the form of major modern central business districts on the spatial-functional organization of Hamedan city. This study was applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of method. Moreover, in order to collect the required data, the documents related to urban development plans, field observations, interviews, and questionnaires were used. Then, to analyze the obtained data, the spatial-locative analysis models in GIS environment were adopted. The conceptual model of this study provided 8 indices for the analysis of the effects of modern high-rise CBDs on city spatial-functional organization, and each of them was analyzed spatially. The results of the analyses indicated that in the single-core spatial organization of Hamedan city, there is a high concentration on the central part of the city, but this concentrated area is expanding and new urban cores are emerging due to various factors. One of the reasons for the appearance of these new cores is business-office high-rise buildings. Another noteworthy finding of this study is that the majority of these newly emerging urban cores are growing along Buali-Jahannama road. Therefore, due to the changes in the spatial-functional structure of the city, paying more attention to urban infrastructures and flexible planning should be among the main priorities of the city management.

In order to explain the ecological-sociological strategy of Tehran land use network/ land cover, the present study was tried to identify the spatial process of the change in the landscape mosaic pattern and its effect on carbon sequestration over the course of 3 decades from 1990 to 2020. In this study, the role of landscape measures in the identification of landscape mosaic spatial pattern changes and its combination with data obtained from ecosystem service modeling was shown. To this end, after examining the process of structural-functional changes in landscape mosaic using decision tree algorithm and InVEST model, the complexity of the relationship between landscape spatial pattern and the quantity of carbon sequestration regulatory services at the two levels of class and landscape was addressed using the measures and data obtained from InVEST model. The findings indicated that the volume of carbon sequestration regulatory services in all periods had reduced due to the effects of the spatial process of “accumulation” in construction strains. Moreover, in the 1990-2020 period, the highest rate of carbon storage loss (291656 tones, 9.58%) occurred due to the effects of the spatial processes of “deletion” in green lands and “fragmentation” in barren lands. In the 2000-2010 and 2010-2020 periods, the volume of carbon storage reduction were 182209 (6.62%) and 159688 (6.22%) tones, respectively. Pertaining to this discussion was the finding that the effect of the change in the index of strain numbers in green and barren lands for all periods was accompanied by increased fineness, which indicates its reverse relationship with carbon sequestration rate. On the other hand, the reduction of other measures in green and barren lands reveals the existence of a direct relationship with the loss of a volume of carbon sequestration in the foregoing period. At the landscape level, the reduction of heterogeneity and simplification of the landscape mosaic spatial pattern led to the reduction of carbon sequestration. From this perspective, it is necessary to prioritize the identification of the spatial processes effective on the landscape structure model in the completion of the processes of the evaluation of the urban development effects on the carbon sequestration service current.

Air pollution is one of the most important problems of industrial cities. The existence of large industrial factories, official and industrial facilities, National Iranian South Oil Company, National Iranian Drilling Company, etc., have turned Ahvaz to one of the main industrial centers and one of the most polluted cities of Iran. Coming into contact with airborne microorganisms is related to a host of negative effects on the human health. This study was carried out to find out the effect of oil industries on air pollution and its optimal locating through the environmental approach in Ahvaz metropolis. In this study, SCREEN3 software was used to find out and analyze the distribution of Sox, NOx, and CO pollutants. Based on expert opinion, the main criteria were determined as climatic, natural, environmental, and economic factors. After calculating weights through the AHP model and attaining the information layers, the GIS software capabilities to combine and overlap the maps were used. This led to a map depicting the optimal location of oil industries congruent with the environmental approach in Ahvaz metropolis. According to the obtained results, there should be no residence-based activity in at least 5000 meters distance from the oil industries, where air pollutants have a considerable density. That is to say, within this distance, the animate and inanimate creatures will be damaged the most. The most optimal areas for the establishment of oil industry facilities are located on the west, south, southwest, and parts of east and north of the area under study.

Hospitals are among the most important service centers, and the selection of the optimal site for them is a very important (yet complex) undertaking, as it can bring about optimal spatial distribution of hospitals and can make them optimally accessible for citizens. In the present study, in order to optimally locate hospitals in District 5 of Tehran metropolis, a combination of the geographical information system, objective weighting methods, and multi-criteria decision making method was used. The geographical information system was used to analyze and manage the optimal hospital locating criteria, the CRITIC weighting method was implemented to account for the correlation between the criteria, and Shannon's entropy method was used to model the existing uncertainty in the criteria. CODAS multi-criteria decision making method was used due to its novelty and the evaluation of alternatives based on two criteria. Based on the results obtained from CRITIC weighting method, distance from health centers, and based on the results of Shannon's entropy method, distance from industrial areas were the most important optimal hospital locating criteria. The results of ranking the candidate sites using CRITIC-CODAS and Shannon’s entropy-CODAS were almost the same, and both methods identified the sites on the western side of the District (that did not have any hospital) as the appropriate sites. The results of the study indicated the high accuracy of combined objective weighting and multi-criteria decision making methods in optimal locating of the hospitals. It might be asserted that these methods can replace thematic weighting methods such as analytical hierarchy process.

It has been years since innovation was first introduced as a driver of economic development. In addition, after a decade of attention to the regional innovation system policies in the Yazd province, this approach has not shown any positive effect on the development of the province. Thus, this study set out to provide a suitable model for the regional innovation system development in Iran following the investigation of the Yazd province as a case study. To this end, this study used the exploratory factor analysis and relative importance index to identify and analyze the key factors effective on the development of regional innovation system. The findings obtained from the opinions of experts and actors of this field showed that the three factors of human resources; the Science and Technology Park; and growth, innovation, and creativity centers in Yazd Province have the highest importance among all studied factors. This reveals the concentration of finances, policies, and projects on these factors and ignorance of other factors. In the light of the importance and the designated priorities, the factors of innovation system in Yazd province were classified into five groups. These included human and social resources, innovation infrastructure, innovation processes, business dynamics, and endogenous development. It can be concluded that so far, the concentration has been on the elementary stage of regional innovation system model – which essentially functions as the input for the system – and the innovation system in Yazd province is in its early stages. Accordingly to the obtained model of the study, the regional innovation system development in Yazd province needs concentration on the three groups of factors, i.e., innovation processes, business dynamism, and endogenous development.